USA > Pennsylvania > A history of the Juniata Valley and its people, Volume I > Part 3
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The Indians inhabiting Pennsylvania and the surrounding states,
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as well as all of New England, belonged to the Algonquian group. Along the southern shore of Lake Ontario, extending from east to west in the order named, were the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas. These five tribes, all of Iroquoian stock, entered into a confederacy about the beginning of the seventeenth century and were known as the "Five Nations." South of them were the Delawares and Susquehannas, occupying lands along the rivers which still bear their names. West of the Five Nations, along the eastern shore of Lake Huron, were the Hurons and occupying the country now comprising the State of Ohio were the Wyandots, Miamis, Shawnees and some minor tribes.
Just when the confederacy of the Five Nations was formed is un- certain. The Jesuit Relations (1659) tell of a tradition that, at a time before the first English settlements were made in America, the Susquehannas almost exterminated the Mohawks in a ten years' war. Some historians assert that the defeated Mohawks appealed to their kindred tribes along the shore of Lake Ontario for assistance, and that this led to the establishment of the Five Nations. Captain John Smith, who explored the Chesapeake bay in 1608, says the Susquehannas and Mohawks were then at war with each other. The Susquehannas were evidently a powerful and war-like tribe. Kelker's History of Dauphin County says that "in 1633 they were at war with the Algonquin tribes on the Delaware, maintaining their supremacy by butchery." A few years later they became engaged in a war with the tribes in Maryland and Virginia and in 1642 Governor Calvert, of Maryland, issued a proclamation declaring them public enemies. In 1647 the Hurons, although of Iroquoian stock, were on the verge of being extinguished by the Five Nations, when the Susquehannas sent to them an offer of assistance against the common enemy. At that time the Susquehannas numbered 1,300 warriors "trained to the use of fire-arms and European modes of war by three Swedish soldiers, whom they had obtained to instruct them." For some reason the friendly offer was declined and the Hurons were almost completely destroyed as a tribe.
Egle's History of Pennsylvania says that in 1656 "The Iroquois, grown insolent by their success in almost annihilating their kindred tribes north and south of Lake Erie, provoked a war with the Sus- quehannas, plundering their hunters on Lake Ontario and
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though the Susquehannas had some of their people killed near their town, they in turn pressed the Cayugas so hard that some of them retreated across Lake Ontario to Canada. They also kept the Senecas in such alarm that they no longer ventured to carry their peltries to New York, except in caravans escorted by six hundred men, who even took a most circuitous route. A law of Maryland, passed May I, 1661, authorized the governor of that province to aid the Susquehannas."
In April, 1663, the Five Nations, chagrined by their repeated defeats, appealed to the French for assistance and at the same time sent an army of 1,600 men against the Susquehanna fort, fifty miles from the mouth of the river bearing that name. Although the invaders out- numbered the Susquehannas two to one, they were repulsed and "pursued with great slaughter."
According to the Relations, the Susquehannas were completely over- thrown in 1675, but the account fails to state who were the victorious conquerors of the little remnant of this once formidable tribe. It is a well established fact in history, however, that the Iroquois claimed, "by right of conquest," all the lands on the Susquehanna and its branches and sold them to William Penn and his successors.
Contemporary with the Susquehannas and dwelling west of them was a tribe of Indians known to early historians by various names. Prior to the eighteenth century western Pennsylvania was an unknown region to the white man. No trader or adventurer had yet extended his journeys that far from the coast and all that can be learned of this early tribe is based only on tradition. On Smith's map of 1608 they are referred to as the "Attaocks"; eight years later Hendricksen made a map on which this tribe appears as the "Iottecas"; the Plantagenet Pamphlet of 1648 calls them the "Ihon a Does"; and on Visscher's map of 1655 they are given the name of "Onajutta-Haga." All these terms were finally crystallized into "Juniata," by which name the river running through the country they once inhabited is still known. The Juniatas were of Iroquois stock and the tribal name is derived from that language. Professor A. L. Guss, who devoted considerable time to the study of Indian legends and traditions, says: "The name Juniata, like Oneida, is derived from onenhia, onenya or onia, a stone, and kaniote, to be upright or elevated, being a contraction and corrup- tion of the compound." Due to the fact that the names Juniata and
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Oneida were derived from the same source, some writers have sug- gested that the latter tribe once inhabited the Juniata valley, or at least the tribe living along the Juniata river in early days was a part of the Oneidas. There is no evidence to show that the Oneidas ever were a resident tribe in the Juniata valley, and it is probably only a coincidence that the two cognate tribes adopted names similar in sound and meaning.
It is believed that the Juniata or Standing Stone people had their great council fire where the city of Huntingdon is now located. Here they erected a pillar of stone-quite likely to commemorate the fact, as they believed, that it was upon that spot the Great Spirit caused them to spring from mother earth like the trees of the forest. The first mention in the white man's history of the Standing Stone is in a journal of Conrad Weiser, Indian agent and interpreter, recording the events of a journey from his home in Berks county, Pennsylvania, to the forks of the Allegheny and Muskingum rivers. The entry in this journal for August 18, 1748, says: "Had a great rain in the afternoon; came within two miles of Standing Stone, twenty-four miles." Five or six years later John Harris, the founder of Harrisburg, visited the spot and described the stone as "about fourteen feet high and six inches square." In 1843 Sherman Day gathered all the traditions possible concerning the stone. He says it was "four inches thick by eight inches wide," and adds: "The tribe regarded this stone with superstitious veneration, and a tradition is said to have existed among them that if the stone should be taken away the tribe would be dispersed, but that so long as it should stand they would prosper." The souvenir edition of "Historic Huntingdon," published in 1909, says: "Arching around a tall, slim pillar of stone covered with hieroglyphics, were wig- wams or lodges of the browned sons of the forest. The stone referred to, which was supposed to bear in its cabalistic inscriptions a record of the history and achievements of the tribe, was regarded with great veneration by the natives, and its conspicuous position and appearance led the white visitors to designate the locality by the name 'Standing Stone.' This stone stood above Second street between the Pennsylvania railroad and the river, on or near No. 208 Allegheny street," etc.
The real history of the original standing stone will probably never
STANDING STONE. FROM A PAINTING BY JOHN CHAPLIN.
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be known. Years before the white man came to the Juniata valley, the tribe who erected it had been overthrown by the Five Nations. There is no well authenticated account of the conquest, but the journals of the Jesuit missionaries among the Hurons and Iroquois tell of expedi- tions of great war parties to the southward and that they returned with many prisoners. No doubt these prisoners were Juniatas and that the tribe was annihilated by the Iroquois confederacy. For half a century or more the entire Juniata region then remained without a resident tribe and was used by the conquerors as a hunting ground. Then the Tuscaroras were permitted to settle there and later the Shawnees and, Delawares were allowed to dwell there for a time. Heckewelder, a missionary among the latter Indians, in speaking of the Juniata river, says: "This word is of the Six Nations. The Delawares say Yuchniada or Chuchuiada. The Iroquois had a path leading direct to a settlement of the Shawnees residing somewhere on this river; I under- stood where Bedford is. Juniata is an Iroquois word, unknown now."
The same authority refers to the standing stone as follows: "Achsinnick is the proper name for this place. The word alludes to large rocks standing separate and where no other is near. I know four places within 500 miles which have this name, two of which are large and high rocks in rivers. For noted places where a small rock is they give the name Achsinnessink, the place of the small rocks."
The Juniatas were vanquished and lost their identity as a tribe prior to 1675, and the Delawares did not come into the valley until about 1725. Professor Guss is of the opinion that when they came they adopted the old name for the stream, and upon arriving at the site of Huntingdon they translated it to their own language as Achsinnick. Says he: "The old totem-post, it appears, remained. This, and the traveling Iroquois on their hunting and marauding expeditions, kept alive the story of the extirpated tribe. It was handed down to the white people, who never saw or heard of the old maps, or if they did, they could not have recognized the root and meaning of the term. At this place the traditions had been kept alive for over one hundred years, but somewhat corrupted by explanatory innovations."
When the Indians left the valley after the purchase of 1754, they either destroyed the stone or carried it away with them. After their departure the settlers erected a second stone upon the site of the original
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one. According to Rev. Philip Fithian, who visited Huntingdon in 1775, this stone was "a tall stone column or pillar nearly square . seven feet above the ground." It bore the name of John Lukens, surveyor general, with the date 1768, and also the names of Charles Lukens, assistant surveyor general, Thomas Smith, a brother of Rev. William Smith, and some others. This stone was later destroyed-one account says by some rowdies while on a drunken frolic. A part of it is still in the possession of E. C. Summers, of Huntingdon. Subse- quently a third stone was erected. It stands at the junction of Penn and Third streets and bears a tablet upon which is the following in- scription : "Onajutta-Juniata-Achsinnic. Standing Stone erected September 8, 1896, as a Memorial of the Ancient Standing Stone re- moved by the Indians in 1754."
Following the Juniatas, the next tribe to acquire a habitat in the Juniata valley were the Tuscaroras. When the first white people came to North Carolina they found the Tuscarora Indians along the Tar, Neuse and Pamlico rivers. There were also Tuscarora settlements on the headwaters of the Cape Fear, Roanoke and James rivers. Their traditions show that they were descended from the same stock as the Iroquois and that some time in the far distant past they lived in New York with some of the tribes that constituted the Five Nations. In one of their traditions they are called the "Real People" and it is set forth that their origin was in the northern regions. After many conflicts with giants and monsters along the St. Lawrence river they formed a confederacy and took possession of the country south of the Great Lakes. In a war among the northern tribes some years later several families of the "Real People" concealed themselves in a cave. There Tarenyawagon, the Holder of the Heavens, appeared to them and led them down the Hudson to the sea, where the North Carolina branch became detached and drifted southward. As in other Indian tribes, they were divided into families named after animals, such as the bear, wolf, turtle, beaver, deer, eel and snipe. The men were not permitted to marry a woman of the same clan or gens, and all descent was reckoned in the female line, in which the military and civil chieftainships were hereditary. Those in North Carolina depended more upon the products of their fields than did their northern brethren, and
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raised large quantities of corn, beans, potatoes, tobacco and other vegetables.
Lawson's "History of North Carolina," written in 1710 and published in London a few years later, says of the Tuscaroras: "They have many amiable qualities. They are really better to us than we have ever been to them, as they freely give us of their victuals at their quarters, while we let them walk by our doors hungry, and do not often relieve them. We look upon them with disdain and scorn, and think them little better than beasts in human form; while, with all our religion and education, we possess more moral deformities than these people do."
At the time Lawson wrote the tribe "had fifteen towns and twelve hundred warriors, making a population of about six thousand persons." The "moral deformities" of the white people who settled North Caro- lina were such that they did not recognize the right of the natives to the soil, but took possession of the lands without purchase and by force if necessary. In these circumstances it is not surprising that in time the ire of the Tuscaroras was aroused and that they entered into a conspiracy with the adjacent tribes to expel the trespassers. September 22, 17II, was the day of the general uprising. The whites were slaughtered without regard to age or sex, and those who sought shelter in the forests were hunted all night by the light of torches. Assistance came from South Carolina and Virginia, and a relentless war against the Tuscaroras was inaugurated. The Indians fortified them- selves near the present city of Newbern, but were driven from their position with a loss of about one hundred killed and the survivors were forced to agree to terms of peace dictated by the victors, who were more magnanimous than might be expected.
Subsequently some of the Tuscaroras were captured and sold into slavery, and in the spring of 1713 hostilities were resumed by the tribe. Again South Carolina came to the rescue of the settlers. On March 26, 1713, the Indians were defeated in a hard fought battle on the Neuse river. A large number of their warriors was killed and about eight hundred captured and sold as slaves. An active campaign of three months followed, when the Tuscaroras were driven from their lands and villages and sought "a refuge on the Juniata, in a secluded interior near the Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania."
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Such, in brief, was the manner in which the Tuscaroras became a resident tribe in the Juniata valley. Here they were under the protection of the Five Nations, as may be seen from a speech by one of the Iroquois chiefs at a conference with Governor Hunter, of New York, September 20, 1714. "We acquaint you," said the Iroquois orator, "that the Tuscarora Indians are come to shelter themselves among the Five Nations. They were of us, and went from us long ago, and are now returned and promise to live peaceably among us."
Just when the Tuscaroras left the valley is uncertain. That they were still living there in 1720 is shown by a correspondence between the president of the New York council and Governor Spottswood, of Virginia. Late in the year 1719 the former wrote to the governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and Carolina that the Five Nations felt that they had been "slighted by the governments to the southward," and suggested the advisability of the governors of the colonies named coming to Albany for the purpose of holding a treaty conference. Governor Spottswood declined the invitation in a letter filled with sar- casm, in which he referred to the Five Nations as follows: "In the years 1712 and 1713 they were actually in these parts assisting the Tuscarorouroes, who had massacred in cold blood some hundreds of the English and were then warring against us; and they have at this very day the chief murderers, with the greatest part of that nation, seated under their protection near Susquehanna river, whither they removed them when they found they could no longer support them against the force which the English brought upon them in these parts."
A few years later, about 1722 or 1723, the tribe was admitted into full fellowship with the Iroquois confederacy, which from that time was known as the "Six Nations." It would appear, however, that some of the Tuscaroras continued to reside in the Juniata valley for several years after the amalgamation of the tribe with those in New York. On May 27, 1753, John O'Neal wrote from Carlisle to the governor of Pennsylvania that "a large number of Delawares, Shawnees and Tuscaroras continue in this vicinity, the greater number having gone to the west."
After the purchase of 1754 the Indians gradually departed from the valley of the Juniata, leaving the white man in undisputed possession. But the names they gave to some of the natural features of the country
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are still in use. Such words as Juniata, Kishacoquillas, Mahantango, Tuscarora, and a host of other names as applied to the mountains, vales and streams of central Pennsylvania, stand as mute reminders of a departed race.
CHAPTER III
THE ERA OF SETTLEMENT
Early Spanish Explorations-Captain John Smith-First White Men in Pennsylvania -Overlapping Grants-Swedish and Dutch Purchases-First Settlement in Penn- sylvania-William Penn-The Proprietary Government-The Great Treaty- Early Traders West of the Susquehanna-First Mention of the Juniata Valley- Treaty of 1736-Shickalamy-Kishacoquillas-Indian Towns-Ohesson-Assun- nepachla-Treaty of 1749- The Squatters-Burning Their Cabins-Licensed Traders-George Croghan-Murder of Armstrong, Smith and Arnold-Captain Jack-James Patterson-Andrew Montour-Peter Shaver-French Intrigue- Treaty of 1754-Indian Discontent over Boundary-A New Treaty-The Land Office Opened-First Authorized Settlements in the Valley.
F OR more than a century after the first voyage of Columbus few attempts were made to found permanent settlements in the New World. During that time expeditions sent out by the different European nations explored the entire coast-line of the United States and some of them penetrated far into the interior. At an early date some Spaniards visited the Chesapeake bay, where they learned from the Indians of a great river which flowed into the northern part of the bay. The Indians told them that by going up this river a distance of eighty leagues, then following a smaller stream westward and cross- ing the mountains, they would come to a great river flowing southward. Although the account of the expedition is imperfect in many particulars and the description of the streams is somewhat vague, there is little doubt that the rivers referred to are the Susquehanna and Juniata, while the great river beyond the mountains is the Ohio. This informa- tion, meager and unsatisfactory as it is, was probably the first gained by white men of the interior of Pennsylvania.
In 1608 Captain John Smith, of the Jamestown colony in Virginia, explored the Chesapeake bay and visited the mouth of the Susquehanna, which the Indians told him issued "from some mighty mountains betwixt two seas." Six years after Smith's expedition three Dutch
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traders from the post at Albany crossed over to the headwaters of the Susquehanna and descended that stream for some distance. It is be- lieved that these three Dutchmen were the first of the Caucasian race to set foot upon Pennsylvania soil.
Owing to a lack of accurate maps and a definite knowledge of the country, the land grants made by the English government frequently overlapped each other. The territory now forming the State of Pennsylvania was included in the Virginia grant of 1606 and by the New England charter of 1620. The southern portion was covered by the Maryland grant of 1632 and the northern part by the Connecticut grant of 1662. The Dutch also claimed the territory by virtue of Henry Hudson's discovery of the Delaware bay and river in 1609. Samuel Smith, in his "History of the Colony of Nova Caesaria, or New Jersey," says: "In 1627 the Swedes made their appearance in this region, and soon thereafter purchased of some Indians (but whether of such as had the proper right to convey is not said) the land from Cape Inlopen to the Falls of Delaware, on both sides of the river, which they called New Swedeland stream and made presents to the Indian chiefs to obtain peaceable possession of the land so purchased."
There is some doubt as to the accuracy of the above date. George Smith, in his "History of Delaware County, Pennsylvania," says that the Swedes made no settlements on the Delaware until after 1631. In 1638 Peter Minuet, who had gone over from the Dutch to the Swedes, established a fort and trading post called Christina, near the mouth of Minquas creek, and at the same time purchased of the Indians all the west side of the Delaware river as far up as Trenton. Thus the Swedes got all the land from Cape Henlopen to the falls "and as much inward from the river as they may want." This transaction is believed by some writers to be the one referred to by Samuel Smith, though it did not take place until eleven years after the date mentioned in his work.
The first settlement in Pennsylvania was made by the Swedes near Philadelphia in 1643. On September 25, 1646, the Dutch purchased a tract of land including part of the site of Philadelphia and over- lapping, to some extent, the Swedish purchase of 1638. This brought about a conflict of claims and in 1655 the Swedish authority was over- thrown by Peter Stuyvesant. Nine years later the Duke of York con-
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quered New Netherland and after that the settlements on the Delaware were under English control.
Sir William Penn, father of the founder of Pennsylvania, was a distinguished admiral in the British navy in Oliver Cromwell's day and at his death left claims against the English government amounting to £16,000 for money advanced and arrearages of salary. These claims descended to his son William, who, while a student at Oxford, became a Quaker and for some time paid little or no attention to their adjust- ment. At last, in 1680, being desirous of securing a location where the Quakers could worship unmolested according to their peculiar belief, he asked King Charles II. to grant him "letters patent for a tract of land in America, lying north of Maryland, on the east bounded by the Delaware river, on the west limited as Maryland, and northward to extend as far as plantable." After several conferences concerning boundary lines, etc., a charter was granted on March 4, 1681, and confirmed by royal proclamation the following month. The extent of the province was three degrees of latitude from north to south, between "the beginning of the fortieth degree of northern latitude and the beginning of the three and fortieth degree of northern latitude," and extending westward five degrees of longitude from the Delaware river, except "all within a circle drawn twelve miles distant from New Castle, northward and westward, to the beginning of the fortieth degree of northern latitude." On April 8, 1681, Penn addressed to the inhabi- tants of the region included in his grant the following proclamation :
"My Friends: I wish you all happiness here and hereafter. These are to let you know that it hath pleased God, in his providence, to cast you within my lot and care. It is a business that, though I never undertook before, yet God hath given me an understanding of my duty, and an honest mind to do it uprightly. I hope you will not be troubled at your change, and the King's choice, for you are now fixed, at the mercy of no governor that comes to make his fortune great. You shall be governed by laws of your own making, and live a free, and, if you will, a sober and industrious people. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person. God has furnished me with a better resolution, and has given me his grace to keep it. In short, whatever sober and free men can reasonably desire for security and im- provement of their happiness, I shall heartily comply with, and in five months resolve, if it please God, to see you. In the meantime, pray sub-
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mit to the commands of my deputy, so far as they are consistent with the law, and pay him those dues that formerly you paid to the order of the Governor of New York, for my use and benefit; and so I beseech God to direct you in the way of righteousness, and therein prosper you and your children after you."
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